


What it Looks Like

by Beth Harker (chiana606)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiana606/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David catches Blink and Mush kissing on New Year's Eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What it Looks Like

“It’s not what it looks like…”

David had never drank before, not ever aside from a glass of wine last Passover, which had made him slightly light-headed, but in a way that was still respectable. Tonight was different. The first hour of the new century had dawned, and it was already very clear to David that the last hour of the old one, though fun, had been ill spent. He was stumbling, dizzy, and drunk, and he didn’t know if he ought to blame himself for it, or blame Spot and Skittery, who had encouraged the whole thing.

Wherever David was now (not inside of Tibby’s, he noticed), it was like he’d gotten there by magic. Blink and Mush were there too, sharing a very magical moment.

David rubbed his eyes. He continued to stare at his friends. They stared back at him, alarmed, four-headed, and flush from kissing.

“Dave?”

Blink looked angry, but Mush put a hand on his chest to hold him back.

“Happynewyear,” David said, then frowned. It hadn’t come out right at all. “Happy,” he said again, carefully enunciating each letter. “New. Year.”

Blink and Mush exchanged glances. The sheer number of hands and eyes they had was astounding. Blink relaxed.

“He ain’t gonna remember nothing tomorrow,” he informed Mush, moving over to put a supportive arm around David’s shoulder. “Happy new year, Mouth. What d’ya say we find you a bed to ring in the twenty-first century in?”

“By sleeping?” David asked.

“By sleepin’,” laughed Mush. “You hear what Mouth said there, Kid? He’s gonna ring in the twenty-first century by sleepin’.”

“That's the good part of it. Think of the headache he’s gonna wake up to.”

“Us too. We oughta sleep, Kid, before anyone else catches us…”

Mush launched himself at Blink, like he was going to kiss him again, only to get pushed away. Blink looked at David significantly, and hissed something at Mush. Mush wasn’t quite as unsteady on his feet as David was, but he swayed a little bit, or maybe it was the world that was swaying. David closed his eyes, and everything seemed to spin around, until it was all lopsided, upside-down, sickening, and then suddenly black.

——-

The next thing David knew it was morning. It was four AM. It was bitter cold out. Kloppman was screaming at the Newsies to get up, and David was not in his bed. There was a foot in his hair, and David managed to refer to Boots as “Les” and Dutchy as “Mama” before he really figured out where he was.

David had gained an extra heartbeat in his head, which was so loud he wondered if it might be disturbing anybody else. His mouth was dry, and his stomach churned. Boots tumbled out of the bed that they’d apparently been sharing, and Jack laughed.

“You ready for the first headline of the century,” Jack asked, nudging David’s side.

Towards the back of the room, Blink and Mush were laughing together, as they dressed for the winter morning. Blink kept poking Mush in the in the head for some reason. They looked happy, but a little worse for wear.

Jack waved his hand in front of David’s face.

“Daavey,” he said in a bright sing-song, then laughed again. He sat down next to David, arms looping easily around his shoulder. “Jesus, Dave, didn’t expect you to get like that from a beer and two whiskeys.”

Whiskeys. Right. David had had a beer and two whiskeys the night before, because they had been free, because the others had all had four times as much, and because he’d felt as if he’d grown and accomplished a great deal in 1899, and deserved to try something new if he wanted to.

“Yeah. Me too,” David admitted. “Never again.”

Jack shrugged. “Don’t take it personal, but I can see why you stays on the straight and narrow.”

“I can’t even roll my eyes at you. Rolling my eyes makes the room spin.”

Jack slapped David on the back. “The fresh air will do you good,” Jack promised.

David didn’t have much time to decide whether or not it actually would. People were leaving. David had slept in his clothes and shoes, so he was already dressed, and Jack was pulling on his arm to get him to leave too.

———————-

The selling day was spent mostly trying to trace together the events from the night before, which was unsettling, and something David decided he never wanted to have to do again.

Jack was more attentive than normal. David couldn’t tell if it was because Jack was worried about him, amused, or simply trying to be nice. Either way, Jack checked in on David unusually often after they split up to sell, and stopped to sit down for lunch with David instead of just grabbing hotdog or a pretzel and continuing to call out out the headlines with his mouth full. Jack spent a lot of the day with his arm around David’s shoulder, grasping David at the elbow, or even once or twice with his hand in David’s hair.

It was driving David to distraction and, he slowly realized, it was one of the missing pieces of last night’s puzzle.

David had spent much of the night hanging all over Jack. He was pretty sure he and Jack had discussed that very thing. The memory was blurry, but David was ninety percent certain that he’d leaned his forehead on Jack’s shoulder and told him that he loved it when Jack touched him, and never to stop before getting up to go…somewhere.

Jack was a very physical person, and that physicality was an integral part of him. David knew this. He’d almost become used to it, so much so that little touches throughout the day were simply a part of the background of his life. Jack couldn’t keep his hands off of anybody. He’d once slapped David’s father across the back after telling a joke, before realizing what he’d done, and retreating. It was just a part of how Jack communicated, and David couldn’t believe he’d gone and tried to make it more than it was.

He couldn’t believe it, either, when that afternoon Jacks fingers traced their way over the nape of his neck, after asking David about his headache. David froze, his skin tingling. This felt new. He blinked, and managed to give Jack an answer of some sort. 

Later, David told himself he was being silly, and to forget about it.

———

Mush Meyers had spent New Year’s Eve kissing Kid Blink. After David got over thinking of himself, his headache, and Jack, that was the idea that stood out in his mind. At first he wondered if he’d imagined it, but then he noticed that Mush and Blink were avoiding him. One day Blink had to be held off shouting that he’d soak David if he kept staring, and David didn’t know what he’d done wrong or what it meant.

He couldn’t help watching Blink and Mush these days. They were always so close together, even closer than Jack and David were. They had secrets. They could pass hours upon hours in each other’s company. They always had their hands on each other, and nobody could predict Blink’s moods and rages the way that Mush did.

David began to think he ought to do something nice for Blink and Mush, to let them know that things were okay. That was how Newsies operated. David had known that Boots wasn’t angry with him for passing out in his bunk on New Year’s Eve when Boots had asked him to join in a game of marbles, and David’s apology had come in the form of accepting the invitation, even though it wasn’t the kind of thing that usually interested him.

David asked Blink and Mush over to Friday night dinner at his home, and then waited. They came. Of course they did. Anything else would have meant that they hated him. David was relieved anyway.

Mush liked everything. He thought the curtains separating David and Sarah’s room from the rest of the apartment were the prettiest curtains he’d ever seen, up until he saw the curtains between Sarah’s bed and the fire-escape and decided that those were the prettiest curtains he’d ever seen. In Mush’s estimation David’s mother was lovely, his father was strapping and bright, and the food was very very very great (which in Mush speak meant that it was incomparable.).

Blink was nervous. He took stock of the exits, and he fidgeted, up until Sarah spoke to him. David was glad that she did, because he was used to Blink being angry, and he was used to Blink being happy, but he wasn’t used to Blink being shy and uncertain. As much as David had figured out newsie social codes (and he thought he ought to know more than Sarah at this point), he couldn’t quite compare to his sister when in came to putting people at ease.

The meal was very nice, and after it David invited Mush and Blink up to the rooftop with him.

“This is good,” Mush said, surveying the the world around him, the laundry hung up by those optimistic enough to hope it wouldn’t freeze and too poor to afford a stove, the stars that shone a little brighter up here than they did on the ground.

Blink looked like he’d grab on to Mush. He reached out for the other boy, and then stopped. David thought of the new century, of how the year 2000 was another hundred years away, and maybe by then a lot of things would have changed.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what I saw on New Year’s Eve,” David started.

Blink’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well forget it.”

David raised his hands, a mixture of surrender and defence. “It’s not like that. It’s fine. It’s just…”

David found that Mush was easier to look at than Blink. Mush was a lot like Sarah in some ways. You could tell him anything, and he’d just understand, no matter what it was. Aside from Jack, David trusted Mush more than he did any of the other newsies.

“I’m in love with Jack,” David said, right into Mush’s eyes. He’d rehearsed a better, more subtle way of saying it, but he couldn’t remember it any more. He’d rehearsed a way of saying it that he’d been able to back out of if it didn’t go well.

Mush grinned at David, then grinned at Blink. He put a calming arm on Blink’s elbow.

“Told you,” Mush said.

Blink's entire stance changed, and David realized that it was because Blink was his friend. Blink had never wanted to fight him in the first place, but there were certain things one had to be defensive about. Everybody needed to protect themselves, but David didn’t need to protect himself from Blink and Mush anymore. They were the same as he was.

“You wanna talk?” Blink asked. He was different now. He was kind, and he wanted to know.

David nodded.

**Author's Note:**

> I've written over 200 Newsies fics. Go here to find them: http://david-jacobs-would.tumblr.com/post/125939888514/masterlist-of-newsies-fan-fiction-by
> 
> Comments of any sort are always appreciated. :)


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